I walk my parlor floor,

And through the open door

I hear a footfall on the chamber stair;
I'm stepping toward the hall

To give the boy a call;

And then bethink me that

he is not there!

I thread the crowded street;

A satchelled lad I meet,

With the same beaming eyes and colored hair:

And, as he's running by,

Follow him with my eye,

Scarcely believing that

I know his face is hid

Under the coffin-lid;

he is not there!

Closed are his eyes; cold is his forehead fair;

My hand that marble felt; O'er it in prayer I knelt; Yet my heart whispers that

I cannot make him dead!

When passing by the bed,

he is not there!

So long watched over with parental care,

My spirit and my eye

Seek it inquiringly,

Before the thought comes that - he is not there!

When, at the cool, gray break

Of day, from sleep I wake,

With my first breathing of the morning air

My soul goes up, with joy,

To Him who gave my boy,

Then comes the sad thought that he is not there!

MY CHILD

When at the day's calm close,
Before we seek repose,

I'm with his mother, offering up our prayer,
Whate'er I may be saying,

I am, in spirit, praying

For our boy's spirit, though he is not there!

Not there! Where, then, is he?

The form I used to see

Was but the raiment that he used to wear;
The grave that now doth press
Upon that cast-off dress,

Is but his wardrobe locked; he is not there!

He lives! In all the past
He lives; nor, to the last,
Of seeing him again will I despair;
In dreams I see him now;

And, on his angel brow,

I see it written, "Thou shalt see me there!"

Yes, we all live to God!

Father, thy chastening rod

So help us, thine afflicted ones, to bear,

That, in the spirit-land,

Meeting at thy right hand,

11

"Twill be our heaven to find that he is there!

John Pierpont.

THE LITTLE BEACH-BIRD

THOU little bird, thou dweller by the sea,
Why takest thou its melancholy voice,
And with that boding cry

Why o'er the waves dost fly?

O, rather, bird, with me

Through the fair land rejoice!

Thy flitting form comes ghostly dim and pale,
As driven by a beating storm at sea;

Thy cry is weak and scared,

As if thy mates had shared

The doom of us. Thy wail,

What doth it bring to me?

Thou call'st along the sand, and haunt'st the surge Restless and sad; as if, in strange accord

With the motion and the roar

Of waves that drive to shore,

One spirit did ye urge ·

The Mystery

the Word.

Of thousands, thou, both sepulcher and pall,
Old Ocean! A requiem o'er the dead,

From out thy gloomy cells,

A tale of mourning tells,

Tells of man's woe and fall,

His sinless glory fled.

Then turn thee, little bird, and take thy flight Where the complaining sea shall sadness bring

TO A WATERFOWL

Thy spirit nevermore.

Come, quit with me the shore,

For gladness and the light,

Where birds of summer sing.

13

Richard Henry Dana.

TO A WATERFOWL

WHITHER, midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean-side?

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,

The desert and illimitable air,

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end;

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend
Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

William Cullen Bryant.

THANATOPSIS

To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart; -
Go forth, under the open sky, and list